[geeks] Getting into a headless eMac

[John Francini]

No, it it most assuredly NOT UNTRUE.  As it ships from Apple, the eMac  
does NOT *support* any other form of video out other than screen  
mirroring.

Just because some hacker can fiddle with Open Firmware and make the  
thing do something that Apple chose not to provide -- possibly for  
technical reasons, possibly for marketing reasons --  doesn't make the  
statement any less true.

I wrote: "I believe that all eMacs could do was mirror the desktop".  
And that's true.  OUT OF THE BOX.  Which is all I care about.

Latent capabilities of the hardware are completely and utterly  
irrelevant to the discussion. The likelihood of coming across a Mac  
that has been hacked this way is very low.  So, for most situations  
(probably 99.999% of them) the statement is still true. Most Apple  
products are *not* used by people who read this list or have the  
equivalent technical savvy; they're owned by people who use their Macs  
as a tool to get their {job, vocation, hobby, life} done. And any Mac  
coming *into* the hands of a Geeks list reader is likely to have come  
from

So would you rather have me saying this:

"eMacs do monitor mirroring *only* out of the box. In the (rather  
unlikely) event that the previous owner hacked OpenFirmware to allow  
spreading the Desktop across two monitors, be sure to zap the PRAM by  
holding down the Command-Option-P-R keys while starting the eMac until  
it chimes 3 times. This will clear out any non-factory settings in  
Open Firmware".

rather than "I believe that all eMacs could do was mirror the desktop"?

The former is technically correct, but is long-winded and contains:   
technojargon; a caveat; and a potential "rain dance" action that is  
only of interest to a portion of this list's readership.  It's a  
statement I might hear from someone who is obsessively compulsive  
about technical accuracy over readability. Besides, the short  
statement is an accurate summary of Apple's documentation, technical  
capabilities notwithstanding.

I have a side business outside my day job of providing Mac support.  
One of them has eMacs. I know very well I could, through hacks and  
tweaks, make their Macs do lots of potentially cool things -- things  
that maybe one of them would actually find useful in his day-to-day  
activities. But then I'd have to *support* those hacks and tweaks.  
Been there, done that, got the T-shirt.

I view support as an attempt to turn myself into the Maytag Repair  
Man: collecting dust and cobwebs unless a serious problem crops up,  
the client has usage questions, or the client wants to upgrade. One  
way to help myself in that direction is to stick to Apple's  
recommendations and supported configurations. Unsupported hackery is  
just that: *unsupported*.  It's like making (and watching) an elephant  
dance. You marvel that the elephant can do it, but it's not something  
you want to have it do every day.

It would have been better if Apple had put a block into the firmware  
to prevent this particular latent hardware capability from being used.  
Then we wouldn't be having this pointless discussion over semantics  
and being obsessively-compulsive about largely irrelevant facts.

j





On 30 Jun 2009, at 0:04, Mike Hebel wrote:

> On Jun 29, 2009, at 10:47 PM 6/29/09, John Francini wrote:
>
>> We're not talking about what you can do by hackery; just what the  
>> computer would do in the standard configuration.  I don't tend to  
>> hack my Macs, so I didn't think 'outside the box', as it were.
>
> No offense meant but go back and read your previous post please -  
> you made a flat statement that is untrue.
>
> I understand where you're coming from but all I did was correct an  
> incorrect statement.
>
> That said you are correct that all "non pro" Macs seems to only do  
> mirroring out of the box for whatever reason.
> --
> Mike
>
>
> In the end the journey only matters if you've helped someone along  
> the way.
> _______________________________________________
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